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The IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS) 2022 “Mass Storage and Non-Volatile Memory Roadmap” describes a future in which storage is not decided by one winning medium. It compares flash, disks, tape, optical media and developing technologies against different needs for capacity, speed, cost, endurance and application fit. Its detailed figures and forecasts are a 2022 snapshot—not current 2026 product specifications.
What is the IEEE mass storage roadmap?
The IRDS white paper is an expert roadmap intended to coordinate technology development. It continues earlier iNEMI roadmap activities and sets out a planned ten-year evolution horizon from its 2022 publication. Rather than predict a single universal replacement for today’s storage, it assesses technologies individually and as competitors for particular applications.
The roadmap’s framework considers technical and business issues, quantified application needs, implementation and research needs, technology gaps, potential showstoppers, priorities and alternatives. That makes it useful for understanding the trade-offs a storage system must manage, but its projections should be read as the 2022 authors’ outlook, not as a guarantee that a technology later reached a stated target.
Which storage technologies does it cover?
The paper spans both established mass-storage media and technologies it regarded as developing or emerging in 2022. The established categories include NAND flash and solid-state drives (SSDs), hard disk drives (HDDs), magnetic tape and optical storage. DNA storage and non-volatile memories such as MRAM, RRAM, FRAM and PCM also appear, but the paper does not establish that they were ready to replace mainstream storage.
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NAND flash and SSDs
In the paper’s account, NAND density grows through three-dimensional structures and by storing more bits in each cell. Those approaches increase density but involve trade-offs with endurance and performance. SSDs offer higher performance than HDDs in the report’s comparison, while NAND’s erase-and-write behavior creates management challenges for SSD designs.
HDDs, tape and optical media
Nearline HDDs are considered for high-capacity storage, with energy-assisted magnetic recording discussed as a route to possible future capacity gains. Tape and optical media are considered alternatives for uses including backup and archival storage. The paper notes optical media’s archival role and its competition with tape and HDDs; it does not make one medium the best choice for every archive.
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DNA and emerging non-volatile memory
The 2022 paper presents DNA storage as promising for archives, but says it was still several years from production in that assessment. It also discusses MRAM, RRAM, FRAM and PCM as emerging non-volatile memories seeking application niches where production volume could grow. These are descriptions of the roadmap’s 2022 outlook, not evidence of present-day availability or readiness.
What did the 2022 figures say—and how should you read them?
The following figures are those reported as then-current or approximate by IEEE IRDS in 2022. They are useful for understanding the paper’s baseline, but should not be cited as 2026 prices, capacities or product limits.
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| Measure | IEEE IRDS 2022 figure | Qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Nearline HDD storage cost | About $0.02 per GB, or $20 per TB | Approximate figure reported by the 2022 roadmap. |
| Enterprise NAND flash SSD storage cost | About $0.20 per GB, or $200 per TB | Approximate figure reported by the 2022 roadmap. |
| 3.5-inch nearline HDD capacity | 20–22 TB | Products described as then-current in the 2022 paper. |
| 3D NAND layer count | Up to 176 layers | Products described as then-current in the 2022 paper. |
The cost figures illustrate the roadmap’s capacity-versus-performance trade-off: bulk nearline storage and enterprise flash were assigned substantially different approximate costs per unit of capacity. They are not a like-for-like quote for a particular drive or purchase, and the paper’s context does not establish what either category costs today.
Why do interfaces and storage architecture matter?
A storage roadmap is not only a comparison of recording media. The IRDS paper also covers NVMe and NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), CXL, UCIe, hierarchical storage, and block, file and object storage systems. These interfaces and architectures affect how storage is connected, accessed and organized; they are distinct from the medium that records the data.
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Hierarchical storage places different technologies in roles suited to their characteristics. A system may use faster, more costly storage for data that needs prompt access and higher-capacity, lower-cost media for data accessed less often. This is an architectural choice, not a claim that every deployment uses the same tiers. The paper also includes computational storage and memory and in-memory computing as part of the wider system landscape.
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The roadmap considers data centers and enterprise systems alongside edge and embedded devices. It discusses AI training and inference, backup, cold storage and archives as application settings, as well as the growth of data-center needs. The right design depends on the workload: frequently accessed data can place a premium on bandwidth and latency, while backup or archival use can emphasize capacity, cost, endurance and expected media life.
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Those requirements explain why the roadmap evaluates technologies against several axes rather than ranking them on a single scale:
- Bandwidth and latency: how quickly data can be transferred and accessed.
- Capacity and cost: how much data a system can hold and the cost of that capacity.
- Endurance and media life: how well the medium suits repeated writes or long retention.
- Application fit: whether the technology matches the workload, system architecture and access pattern.
The paper also considers power and implementation needs as system-level concerns. Its central implication is that media selection depends on the task and the system around it; an SSD, HDD, tape system or optical archive cannot be declared the universal winner from these criteria alone.
Is the 2022 roadmap still the latest detailed outlook?
The detailed technical status and figures summarized here come from the IEEE IRDS 2022 white paper. A June 10, 2026 San Francisco Bay ACM event listing says experts had completed a roadmap update covering a 15-year horizon and mentions NAND, emerging non-volatile memory, HDDs, tape, optical storage and DNA storage. That listing is evidence that an update was discussed, but it is not the update document and does not substantiate detailed 2026 forecasts. The 2022 figures above therefore should not be treated as the updated roadmap’s numbers.
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